Afghanistan election results expected

The result of Afghanistan's disputed election will be announced on Sunday, officials said, bringing an end to a bitter, months-long struggle that has seen both sides unable to reach a power-sharing deal.

"The IEC will officially announce the final result of the presidential election tomorrow," Independent Election Commission spokesman Noor Mohammad Noor told Agence France Presse.

Almost six months after Afghans initially cast their ballots in the election to determine a successor to President Hamid Karzai, the election has remained unresolved. Candidates Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah both claimed to have won the election, which was plagued by accusations of fraud on both sides.

A power sharing deal between the two sides has yet to be signed. Ghani, who won the vote after the initial results were tallied, is likely to become President. Abdullah will potentially fill the new post of “chief executive officer,” though under the Afghan constitution the president has nearly total control.

Abdullah is supported mainly by Tajiks and other northern ethnic groups, while Ghani draws support mainly from the Pashtun tribes in the south and east of the country.

Western leaders have long sought to broker a compromise in the stalemated election, with the United States and the United Nations pushing for a “national unity government” that would prevent a regression to the ethnic divisions that caused the country's civil war in the 1990s.

Meanwhile, NATO is set to end its 13-year war against the Taliban this December, though a force of about 12,000 troops is expected to remain in the country in 2015 in a training and support role.

bw/shs (Reuters, AFP, AP)